


Neither Worship Nor Pity To Bring Us Together

by cacophonyGilded



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, christian imagery and whump, heavy on dialogue and religion and not much else, just in time for christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 11:52:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13146126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cacophonyGilded/pseuds/cacophonyGilded
Summary: Even in death, Javert cannot seem to escape Jean Valjean.





	Neither Worship Nor Pity To Bring Us Together

At first, he was alone. Then, as it always was, there was Valjean.

Javert regarded him blankly for an eternity or more. It was all he could do; after the whole of his life, dedicated to this man and his damnation, and then a death spent for this man and his salvation--

Well, he didn’t quite know how to proceed. How to greet your enemy, your savior, the cause of your death? Javert had never been adept in social situations to begin with--this was out of his depth, and it was all he could do to stare--to regard--and to move in doses to him. Javert couldn’t quite remember where he started in this realm of nothing, how he had reached Valjean, or how long it took, but it seemed an eternity before he stood in front of him. He was close enough to touch, when all he could do was stare.

He desperately needed Valjean to break the silence; he did not. At long last, with a voice that no longer remembered how to form words, he spoke.

“Where am I, Valjean.”

It was not the question that Jean Valjean had expected, or perhaps, he had not expected it so soon. The mild surprise faded from his face as quickly as it came, though, and in only a moment he regarded Javert levely again. For a half second, Javert felt the greatest fear of his life, that Valjean would keep his silence indefinitely, that he would spend a lonesome, silent eternity--and that alone would answer his question, would it not?--but then Valjean spoke, soft as in life.

“You’re dead.”

This was unacceptable, as it had not been the answer--one way or another--to the question Javert had posed. He suppressed the urge to shake Valjean, to demand an answer with fear of death in his voice--and how ironic now, that--only with his whole lifetime of composure at his disposal.

“Heaven or hell, Valjean. Please.”

It would be better to know. Even if it were hell, it must be better to know yourself damned than to hold out hope that you had reached salvation.

Valjean only smiled, softly.

“Can you not tell me?”

“I should be able to,” Javert said, “but that you are here as well. You and I were never bound for the same afterlife.”

“You think yourself bound to heaven, and me to hell?”

“There was a time when I did.”

“And now?”

Javert hesitated. “The opposite.”

Valjean frowned. “Why, Javert? What has damned you?”

Javert was unrelenting in his reply, though he knew not if it were himself or Valjean he was trying to strip clean with harsh, brutal truths. “My own hand, and before that, a lifetime of cruelty in the name of justice. Perhaps I have repented for one, but certainly not the other, and no matter what, suicides are not bound for heaven.”

Javert has seen pity of Jean Valjean’s face before; directed at the prostitute woman, or the whore’s child, or the treasonous youths of the barricade, or most despicably of all, at Javert himself. It was the man’s default state. Never before, though, had he seen such an intensity intermingle with the pity on Valjean’s features; not even in Toulon had Valjean seemed so  _ present, _ so angry, so vivid. It seemed more than just the lifting of the confines of life that gave him such a real presence; truly, if Javert did not know better, he would think Valjean capable of nothing short of murder or a miracle (whichever came first) in the moment.

“Javert,” he said, clasping his hands around Javert’s so tightly they became anchors, tethers to some earlier time, some easier life. “What have you done?”

Javert considered, and then, parsing his options, opted to answer him honestly. Was there any other way, with Valjean? Was there any other way with Javert himself? They had always been quite well matched. “The beliefs by which I lived for as long as I lived by a code of beliefs were formally called into question, and I could not bare the strain of questioning myself. I wrote up reforms the Parisian law enforcement would be wise to take, and then I threw myself into the river Seine.”

Valjean bowed his head. “When?”

“I--can hardly see how that makes any difference.”

Bringing his head up again, Valjean met Javert’s blank stare. Blank, so blank, when once he had been focused, his eyes a bloodhound’s caught up in the chase. Valjean’s eyes now spoke of certainty; he already knew the answer to the question he asked, but would not yield until every stuttering suspicion and horrible truth had been confirmed to him. Unable to bear the power Valjean wielded any longer, Javert looked away. 

When had he felt such a shame in meeting Valjean’s eyes? When had be become so unworthy of looking into them?

“When else? The night of the June rebellion--the night you  _ saved my life. _ ” Javert’s dual answer, both to Valjean’s shameful question and the one which plagued his own mind, burned on his tongue, the last few words spat out like a curse.

The event had been a curse, to him who had needed it. How terrible, to have yourself and your enemy revealed and swapped, how terrible, to be powerless and deserve it. Cursed and damned, Javert could only watch his curse spread, his existence poison this nowhere, and beyond that, poison the other.

Surely, Valjean knew already--instinctively--the answer he gave, but the confirmation seemed to break him, or at least to break something very important within him. Poison, spreading. He turned that same intense, too-present gaze on Javert again, and asked, a fire in his voice: “Why?”

“I can’t think of a person who could answer that question more honestly than you. Have you not every reason to want me dead?”

“How could you even th--Javert, I freed you. I have fled your chase and questioned your methods, your stringency. I have held you in contempt, I have resented your persistence as assuredly as I have admired it--but I have not, in many years, wished you dead.” 

“Then you are a fool. Until recently, very recently, I would not have felt a thing at your death but regret that I had not brought you to justice before it happened.”

Valjean regarded him, and it was with damned pity in his eyes, still, after more and more of these words spoken only to hurt. Poison, meet pity. Poison, bleed out.

Javert had hated being pitied in life, and he hated it none less for death framing it. From Valjean, especially, it was unbearable. He had become accustomed to hate from him, or something resembling it, but at least with hate came a twisted respect, and not damnable, crushing--

“I don’t believe you. There was a time when I would have, that I would not doubt for a second that you have never held me in anything but contempt. That time is past, though, now--I know you too well, Javert. Your words are missing an essential conviction.”

Poison, ineffective. 

If Javert was poison, Valjean was the antidote, and wasn’t that  _ typical? _ Javert willed himself to fury, to lash out or to call Valjean’s bluff, to contradict him... and couldn’t. 

This was what broke Javert, what shattered him and, at the end of his line, forced him down on his knees, closer in death to tears than he had been for the last 50 years of his life. The decision to commit suicide, the knowledge that he was damned--all paled in comparison to Jean Valjean, his enemy, the man of mercy, forgiving him, and beyond that, knowing him, intimately. Knowing, perhaps even before he had, that he did not feel indifferent toward him, or even hate him. No--Javert loved Jean Valjean. It was a damnation beyond any other he had come to know.

“Javert.” This was not a voice on fire now; it hardly burned. “Why?”

It was shameful, and yet felt natural to sit here on his knees, head bowed before the temple of Jean Valjean. Before this purest and most holy shrine, Javert could only bury his face in his hands and speak the truth. 

“The lines were solid. I was raised by harsh men on right and wrong, with no room for questioning which was which. I lived by the knowledge that the only good in this heathen world came from order; God was a hateful, strict being who all law came from. He could not forgive any misstep on my part, and so neither could I, for others or for myself. Things were  _ clear." _

Valjean placed a hand on Javert’s back, light, tentative, but solid enough to tether him anew to the moment.

“And then: you. I saw you first in prison, among murderers and rapists and evil men. You were a thief, and a troublesome one at that--you kept struggling to escape against all common sense. I knew my enemy the first time I laid eyes on you, and I was only a boy. I was 19 when I first met you, Valjean. That is how long I have--”

He could not say  _ hate, _ not now, but neither could he speak the truth. In the space left behind, Javert only could swallow.

“I have opposed you. The lines were still clear in Toulon. They may have remained so all my life, but that we met again in Montreuil-sur-Mer. I questioned my judgement for the first time in my life when you, a convict, a thief, pardoned my insurrection after the false Valjean was found, and for the second when your reality was revealed to save a stranger. You acted selflessly, you forgave me even then. I questioned, but resolved myself along the old lines.

“And then came Paris. A third encounter with Jean Valjean, and you had all the power that time. You had the power and you saved my life. I owed a debt to you, and my decision was split--it was moral, but not lawful, to repay you by allowing you your life with the whore’s--with your daughter, with the chance for a happiness I could never known. It was lawful, but not moral, to arrest you from that life. Never had the two been split before--what had been one had never been the other, and I met with the Seine rather than accomodate a difference. I had hoped--that once I found my second life, I would know which was truly just.”

“Do you?”

Javert lifted his head, with an effort. His eyes were dull, blank--as dead as he was. Gravely, he said, “I do.”

Valjean smiled down on him, pitying, always pitying, but gentle. The second made the first hatably bearable. 

“You are the only light I have ever known, Valjean. I was against you, and so I am damned. Why have you come even to my afterlife to remind me of my transgressions?”

Valjean shook his head, nearly amused; he wore a face that said plainly that there was something integral that Javert was still blind to after all this, a secret of some sort that Valjean was privy to, but that Javert would never be, for he had learned all he could in life and was, in death, ignorant of all that mattered.

“You say I showed you a light?”

“The light of God in a man. For all your sins, your crimes, your  _ theft, _ you knew mercy, toleration, charity; every teaching of our immortal Savior that I ignored for the harsh comfort of the ephemeral law of France, you embodied with your actions.”

“We’ve learned much from each other, then,” Valjean mused.

It was a cruel sentiment to express, as Javert heard it. He barked a cold laugh.

“I’ve learned much from you, you mean. I, who knew so little, and acted so cruelly, had much to learn, but what could I teach you? We are forever unequal, Valjean, and I would ask you not to insult me by pretending otherwise.” His poison had proven an ineffectual defense, but it was his only defense, still. 

“You are wrong. Blind. Javert, you have taught me, more than anyone perhaps save my daughter, how to love. That I can, even. Toleration, charity, mercy--all that you have listed, none mean anything without that.”

Javert’s hung head pulled upward, regarding Valjean with the startled fear of a man who has heard his release from prison announced but knows it to be a trick. He has loved Valjean; like a sinner unworthy praying to God in the face of the gallows, he loved Valjean. This love, though, was love unrequited--never had he ever in his life expected that he, Javert, was loved, loved even in the eyes of an all-loving deity, much less loved as a person may love another.

It was a punch in the gut, though not quite an unpleasant one.

“I--you. Love?” 

“After 19 years in Toulon, 19 years without the love of a family, of my sister Jeanne and her children, I had forgotten how. I felt loved again by the Bishop of Digne, the love of God channeled through a man--and I tried to spread that love through Montreuil-sur-Mer. I did not love, though, not truly, until Cosette--she showed me I was still capable of love... and perhaps more. Perhaps even redemption, through that all-consuming love.”

He was silent for a moment, gathering thoughts.

“I did not--do not--love you as I loved Cosette or Jeanne.”

This was what Javert had anticipated, and it restored a sense of balance to the moment, even as he was startlingly disappointed. How to love a man like Javert but distantly--how to love him like an equal? It was impossible, he was sure--that was why Valjean loved him as God did, as part of a collective, indiscriminate, with a love that was three parts pity.

It was love, but so too was it no kind of love at all.

“My love for you was not the love of a family member,” Valjean continued, “Of a brother. Javert, when I saw you again at the barricade, I knew our lives were twined together. I knew then, for the first time, the desire to spend my life with another, as one does in marriage. Too late, I knew, but--only you complete me. So I gave myself up.”

Javert choked with the revelation.

In his life, he had never known love from another, and had only known his own love to be worship--ritualistic, strict, and practiced--for the Lord. Love had only ever been work, work and worship, a task to complete for propriety. With Valjean, then, he had been prepared to worship and to be pitied in return, but never this--never once had the thought of a love that was personal, imperfect, human--a love like marriage--crossed his mind.

Valjean shifted his hands to cup Javert’s face, to lift it from staring at what may have been dirt, had their space not been a vast nowhere.

“I do not know how to love another,” he admitted, voice ashamed. Valjean’s eyes softened, but perhaps not only with pity. Could there be more than pity between them?

“I ask nothing of you but that you stand. Your kneel feels far too much like veneration, and I have never wanted that from you, Javert.”

With a herculean effort, Javert brought himself once more to his feet and looked with even greater effort into Valjean’s eyes, willing himself to be worthy of it.

“You ask me to love yet reject a show of it.”

“I do not ask you to love me; I cannot ask that of you. But if your love were veneration, I would ask you not to love me, for that love belongs only to God.”

“I do not know how to love another,” Javert repeated “but I may love you just the same.”

Valjean’s eyes were steel, cautious and stern. His hands were gentle, one falling from Javert’s face and the other holding him where his head met his neck, a tether, as he had always been a tether.

To what?

To love, maybe.

He did not bring their mouths together--Javert could not have borne that, then, the mere concept of intangible love so fresh as it was--but rather rested his forehead against Javert’s, his eyes closed. They stood in silence for perhaps an eternity.

Javert broke it.

“How did you die, Valjean?” It was barely a murmur, both of them still intimately close. 

In truth, the fact that Valjean must have died to be here with him in their  _ (their) _ nothingness hadn’t crossed Javert’s mind, because the thought of Valjean dead had once been laughable. Even in advancing years, Valjean was a pillar, a rock; he was sturdy and unbreakable, he was immortal, he was either a force of the devil or of God--of God, now, surely--but he was not human enough to do something like die.

Javert had lived by this thought, and died by it, but it was only now, head pressed against Valjean’s, that he considered Valjean’s humanity, the conceivable fact that he was fragile enough to succumb.

“The night of the June rebellion was the last night I felt at my full strength. It left slowly after that--but it did leave. Perhaps that was my fault, for without Cosette, in my grief, I isolated myself, starved and became ill... I went off to die alone, but my daughter found me, before the end. Forgave me. I wait for her now--but it should be many, many years before we reunite.”

“The June rebellion.” 

“Yes. Marius lived, and so Cosette married him, and I felt--obligated to tell him of my past. Of course, I couldn't blame him for separating me from them, but for the first time, I had no one--not even your shadow over my shoulder. I felt your absence instinctively in my soul, I think. Eventually, with everything else, it was bound to kill me.”

Javert, then, was the one reaching out, instigating, for the first time, an intimate touch. He grasped Valjean’s arm, willed himself to be a tether as Valjean was. It was not his forte, but perhaps he could still learn.

“I did not intend that to be so.”

Valjean laughed ruefully. “I never blamed you for it.”

They lapsed into silence again. Javert clung, desperately, to the moment, to the belonging he felt for the first time in his existence. He clung to Valjean’s love as if it were sure to leave him.

Valjean broke the silence that time.

“You asked me to place this. Heaven or hell. Have you figured it out?”

Javert frowned, his brow furrowing. “No. I am lost, Valjean; I may always be lost.”

“Then allow me to guide you.”

Valjean kept their contact with one hand on Javert’s shoulder, but used the other to gesture forward, to a light that Javert had not seen before; surely, it could not have been there, for its vibrance made it clear that previously, he and Valjean had been standing in total darkness.

He took a step toward that light before hesitating.

“Suicides are not bound for heaven.”

Valjean tightened his grip on Javert’s shoulder, shook his head. “Neither are thieves. We are more than our sins, my love.” 

For the first time, Javert found he felt that might even be true, and walked beside Jean Valjean, the thief, the temple, the  _ person, _ saint and sinner, both, who had held him with care for the first time, toward the light of heaven, redeemed by love.

Perhaps he had rather a lot to learn after all.

**Author's Note:**

> eugh, i wasn't actually sure i was going to post this because everything i write about these two feels so embarrassingly private. i got flustered writing this because i felt like i was peeking at some moment meant only for their eyes GOD who am i actually.


End file.
